Podcast: Tom Kiley on where the Sal DiMasi case goes from here

A week after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a certiorari request from former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, his lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, says the time has come for him to focus on his client’s worsening medical condition.

DiMasi’s appeal was the first in the country in which a federal appellate court had been asked to weigh in on the appropriateness of a judge’s jury instructions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark Skilling v. U.S. decision. Skilling narrowed the breadth of honest services crimes to cases involving kickbacks and bribes.

DiMasi’s eight-year sentence, meted out in 2011 by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf, is the longest ever received by an elected official in Massachusetts.

DiMasi is currently suffering from advanced throat and tongue cancer.

In a Lawyers Weekly podcast, Kiley explains why he believes the Supreme Court should have taken the request; his frustrations with the appellate process; and what his next steps are in the case.

“Realistically, right now my focus for [DiMiasi], which we’ve had to defer, has got to be on his conditions of incarceration,” Kiley says. “There are health issues that we need to make sure are addressed.”